Manfred Broy, Deißenböck, and Markus Pizka.
A holistic approach to software quality at work.
In 3rd World Conference for Software Quality (3WCSQ), Munich, Germany, September 2005.
Abstract
Software quality is a crucial issue in a society that vitally depends on software systems. Software quality definitions, standards, and metrics have contributed to the improvement of our understanding of this issue. However, there is a miss-match between the formalization of software quality issues and the practical demands of software quality. Software quality is not what we measure but what we experience when developing, operating, and using software systems over a long period of time. We argue, that it is dangerous to try to capture software quality merely by a set of numbers in terms of software metrics believing that these give an authentic picture. Though these numbers are helpful achieving truly high quality requires in addition a deep understanding of the field as well as valid knowledge on how to attain and assure software quality in development. If the top management of software dependent companies does not have an understanding of what software quality is about, all metrics of the world will not save them from their project failures.
Keywords: Software Quality, Software Metrics, Software Development Processes
